


Harris County, 2017

by vallhund



Series: The Running Girl [1]
Category: Original Work, Political RPF, Political RPF - US 21st c.
Genre: Human Trafficking, Mystery, Other, Political Parties, Thriller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 08:04:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10849866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vallhund/pseuds/vallhund
Summary: After five years at online journalism site Second Look News, executive producer Lynsey Parra is hungry for success. But when the search for a human trafficking victim turns deadly, she realizes that the political ramifications of her story have driven the stakes too high to turn back.





	Harris County, 2017

 

It was about five in the morning on April 24th when Lynsey Parra realized that caffeine no longer had an effect on her.

Five a.m.— _appropriate, I guess, I’ve been in this business for five years and probably at least five days, which is stop thinking about it stop THINKING about it—_ had been her least favorite time of day since she moved to Santa Monica. When the timer app on her iPhone hit five, it meant that she was either in the car already or ought to be. Lynsey’s commute to Long Beach took an hour on good days, and those were rare in the spring.

She decided to replace the coffee with icy Brita-filtered water after fifteen minutes of stumbling around like a duck on ice. Miraculously, it worked; the TV producer was able to wedge herself into the small red Camry pull out of the parking garage and merge onto the Pacific Coast Highway without killing any rodents, pets or sanitation workers. She thought she recognized Jermaine among the small group of men picking scraps of Chinese food up from the broken dumpster near Muscle Beach, but knew he couldn’t have seen her. The older man lived two stories below her, and had provided her with a couple of sources on a story she had written during her days at a small alternative paper. _Made my career, but he still makes more than I do._

It was nearly 6:30 by the time Lynsey pulled into the parking lot in downtown Long Beach. Stepping out of the car, she took a deep breath; the wind was coming up from the port that morning, and she could smell diesel mixed in with saltwater. _I’ll never get tired of that, I think._ On mornings like these, she never wanted to leave Southern California.

 

“Everyone’s here? Jonas, Javier, Jorge...great, we can get going.”

Joan Garabedian never got tired of the fact that the three men responsible for the  _Dispatch Booth_ _,_ Second Look News’ best show, had extremely similar names, despite looking completely different in almost every way. She had christened them the Triad, a nickname that had stuck. As everyone in the central meeting room cracked a polite smile, Lynsey’s other half slipped in through the side door. Brianna Daniels, the anchor of _The Periscope,_ Second Look’s second-best video series, took a seat at the foot of the table. Joan, who was normally quite strict about punctuality, didn’t give her a second look.

“What are we thinking for this week, people? Give me anything.” Joan dragged her chair over from the corner and sat on it backwards, her hands twisting a stress ball back and forth. _The only person at this operation more hyperactive than I am._

“I read something on Mic the other day about a new pro-Confederate group in Ohio.” Jonas’s hollow voice, the product of a major lung operation as a child, was tinged with unusual apprehension. “They’ve applied for a permit to march on Memorial Day in a town called Shipley.”

“Southern Ohio?” Joan tipped her head to one side.

Javier shook his head— _he’ll already know the full details; the Triad share everything._ “Shipley’s a two-hour drive east of Cleveland. Right near the Pennsylvania state line.”

“They’re saying the antifa people from Columbus and Cleveland will drive up there if it goes through,” Jorge added. The skinny man was the oldest member of Second Look’s staff, and had been a reporter in southern Mexico before emigrating to Los Angeles to take care of his terminally ill cousin. While Lynsey respected most of her colleagues, Jorge had easily taught her more than the rest of them put together.

“So, a riot,” Brianna interjected. “Remember what happened in San Bernardino the other month?”

“Seems likely,” Jorge replied. “Assuming the town gives them a permit.”

“There’ll be trouble anyway,” Javier muttered. “The Boys in Gray are all from Shipley. If I know Antifa, they’ll want to make an example of the place as is.”

Jonas shook his head vigorously— _I see they’ve argued about this before. Wouldn't be the first time the Triad has quarreled with itself._ “Make an example of what? A bunch of rednecks going about their business peacefully? Fox News will love that—‘violent leftists unsettle peaceful Middle American hamlet.’”

Lynsey winced briefly, looking across the table at Sara Ann Cuthbert, the only white Southerner in the room. She had previously explained this to Jonas, but the younger reporter had shaken her off. _I get that, though._ Jonas had been the only black student in his school after moving to Kentucky at the age of ten. Jorge had explained to Lynsey that it had been extremely difficult for Jonas. _But Sara Ann didn’t do it to him._

Meeting her gaze, the accountant shook her head. _Not today. And not any other day, in all likelihood._ Sara Ann was a deeply private woman, and was unlikely to bring up her issues to Jonas personally.

“I think it’s a strong story either way,” Jorge said firmly. “Shipley has a big Union monument in the town green. I think people would be interested in how people there started flying the stars and bars at picnics either way—I made a preliminary call there, and heard that’s been a problem. Just going off the viewing data we got back for the piece on the white nationalist newspaper in San Diego, folks who follow us on social media have an appetite for this stuff.” The rest of the Triad nodded in agreement.

“Good. Go for it.” Joan bounced her stress ball off the tabletop. “So for the piece on prison labor, did you get the third source?”

Javier nodded. “An economist from Cal State San Luis has been working on this for a while, and we got about twenty minutes of tape.”

_That’s odd._ Joan typically asked Brianna and Lynsey about _Periscope’s_ plans, and alternated between the two shows until they were done. The executive producer was puzzled even more when Joan followed up by asking the podcast crew about their trip to Mexico City next week. _Has she forgotten we’re here? Or maybe we’re about to get fired. We’re totally going to get fired. Or dressed down. Or maybe she’s just forgetful?_

Brianna gave Lynsey a mystified look as Joan announced they were finished for the morning. Their confusion was cleared up when the COO beckoned to the two of them. “Can you guys hang back a minute?”

Sipping from her metal water bottle, Lynsey approached the older woman, more than a little nervous. Joan had an explosive temper when people displeased her, which had rarely happened recently. But as Brianna took a seat on the edge of the table, Joan broke into a grin. “I talked with a friend of a friend, and it looks like you two will be nominated for the Streamy Award.”

Lynsey gasped and clutched the edge of the table. “That’s easily the biggest online TV award around—I can’t believe—like, what?”

An expression of delight crossed Brianna’s face. “The grocery series?”

Joan nodded. “They were super impressed. When Huffington Post picked it up and compared it to a ‘New Jim Crow for American nutrition’—that turned heads. You two did killer work on that.”

Lynsey cracked her knuckles, instant;ly wishing she hadn’t. “Well, that’s awesome. Still have to beat Vice News, though. And BuzzFeed. And probably—“

“Lyn,” Brianna said gently, and the producer realized she was talking at a mile a minute. “Take a breath.”

Joan’s smile widened a little. “Well, that’s the work ethic that got us this far.” She stood up. “I didn’t want to talk to you about this in front of the Triad. They’ve been having some major issues with the studio, and it’s getting a bit rocky over at _Dispatch Booth_. I’m hoping they can pull it back on track with this Ohio piece, but we’ll see.”

_I hate this._ Joan gossiped incessantly with the younger staff members she picked out of the crowd.

“So, that’s great.” Brianna’s voice was steady. “We wanted to talk to you about the thing I mentioned the other week, the human trafficking story.”

“Right.” Joan’s mouth pursed a little. “Obviously, big issue, big problem, but I’m a little worried about the pop factor. I mean, it’s bad, no other way about it, but is this going to break new ground? I don’t want this to turn into another sob story like the networks would do. We have to be a cut above. I mean, with the Streamy in the mix..”

_This is why she told us._ Joan was an infamous slave driver when she smelled blood in the water. _She wants us to go balls to the wall until September and push Vice News aside. Well, I’m up for that._

“This isn’t your standard bit on how the victims are coping,” Brianna responded. “It has to do with New York and the eighties. My sister’s roommate is a social worker, and he told her  to tell me about this case that turned up. It sounds like some pretty high up people in Manhattan, people in the Studio 76 circuit, were involved in this—that there were some underage girls who were trafficked, and that some pretty powerful people took advantage of them. Wall Street and the like. We’re meeting him for lunch today.”

“Hmmm.” Joan drummed her fingers on the desk. “Are any of these girls around to talk about it?”

“He doesn’t know.”

“They’d be hard to find,” Lynsey added. “The survivors probably won’t be living in the suburbs and working in real estate. They tend to drift downward.” She realized her hands were clenching her water bottle, and her knuckles were white. “They’d be indigent, or dead, or in prison.”

“Oh well.” Joan’s tone was cautious. “You’d need at least one, I think, for an eyewitness account. But I think I could see this working out. Try talking to your friend. In the meantime, the story on mercury in East L.A. really shouldn’t fall through the cracks.”

“That’ll be for this week,” Brianna responded. “This bit would be for May at the earliest. The stuff I added in the Google Doc can hold next week.”

“That all looked A+.” Joan began to stuff her laptop into her bag. “I have to peace; conference call with Abel Harkness Cranston about ad revenue.” She made a gagging noise. “Worst part of this whole damn job, but it is what it is. Sounds like you’re in a good place.”

 

 

 

Lynsey spent most of the rest of the morning supervising postproduction on a story on pesticides in Louisiana, and consequently didn’t see Brianna again until the anchor poked her head into the sound engineers’ cavernous hideaway next to the bathrooms. “It’s lunchtime, sistah.”

“Got it. Harry, looks good. Just make sure to keep the contrast on the pan shot near the end. And do what you can with the feedback at 5:15 of the professor interview, okay?” Hearing a cough from the door, Lynsey slung her bag over her shoulder and followed Brianna out into the bright noontime sun. Her colleague waved off Lynsey’s offer to drive, sliding easily into the driver’s seat of her Prius. “I don’t trust you with this after seeing your car.”

“Har har.” Lynsey fixed her earrings as they pulled out onto the main drag. “Whatcha think on the Streamy?”

Brianna kept her eyes fixated on the road. “It is what it is, but I wouldn’t bet cash money on it. Two women of color with the cast of _Revenge of the Nerds_ judging isn’t great odds. Turn on the radio.”

Lynsey obeyed, and the car was filled with NPR. _“In Atlanta this morning, confusion and fear after a man opened fire in a Radio Shack downtown. Police shot and killed a white male in his mid thirties, who reportedly screamed racial epithets. Three people are hospitalized, one in critical condition. Local politicians are strongly condemning the attack, with Governor Nathan Deal labeling it an act of domestic terrorism.”_

“See what I mean?” Brianna weaved around a truck, merging onto the freeway.

“They’re not the same people. Also, can you talk to Jonas about using the word ‘redneck’?”

Brianna sighed. “Just because we’re both black doesn’t mean I have to take responsibility for—“

“Bri, it’s not about that. We’ve talked about this.” Lynsey sighed internally, realizing she would make little progress. “Jonas sees me as privileged because I can pass, and because I grew up in California. You’re both from the South, you’ve had similar experiences—“

Brianna laughed slightly. “First of all, I’m from the suburbs in Texas, he’s from rural Kentucky. Second, you, privileged? Lady, you had a waaay harder time growing up than either Jonas or me. Tell him _that._ ”

“I did. He said that didn’t mean I could understand what it was like to put up with everything he went through.”

“Oh. Okay.” Brianna sighed again, although Lynsey couldn’t tell if it were from the conversation or the traffic time displayed on a roadside sign. “I get where he’s coming from, but…yeah, I’ll try. No promises.”

“Thanks. It might help.”

Brianna’s only answer was a curse as a FedEx truck cut her off.

 

 

The lunch place was in Koreatown, near one of the city’s few subway stations. Lynsey walked in to find a table while Brianna circled for parking. Entering the restaurant, she was assailed by a tidal wave of noises and smells. _God, I’m hungry._ Her only breakfast had been a hastily gobbled Kind bar.

“I’m guessing you’re Lynsey?”

She turned to see a short man with intense dark eyes. An afro added at least half a foot to his height, and his khakis and neatly pressed oxford shirt conveyed professionalism. _I can definitely see him as a social worker._

“Yes. Calvin?” She offered her hand, which he shook.

“I checked you on LinkedIn.” His voice was much quicker than most Californians, although not as fast as Lynsey herself. “Great piece on grocery stores and POC, by the way.”

She smiled a little. “Brianna did the heavy lifting for the part that went viral, but it was a great team effort.”

“I see you’ve met.” Brianna had entered. “You got a table?”

“Yup.” Calvin led them to a booth in the back, which he had held with his jacket and bag. Menus had already been set out. The social worker looked over his briefly.

Once the waiter had brought water, he began to talk.

“I’m from Bridgeport, Connecticut. I went to UConn for undergrad, did a master’s in social work at the University of Florida, started working for Riverside County two years back.”

Two men slid into the booth behind him. Looking across Calvin’s shoulder, Lynsey was met with an intense gaze from one of them, a tall man with light green eyes and a shaved head.

Calvin took a sip of water, then kept talking.

“But this whole thing got going when I went back to visit my parents in New Haven. One of my aunts was talking about a girl she had known in the old neighborhood in Bridgeport. This girl’s mother was a caf worker at an elementary school in the suburbs—rich, white—and my aunt was recounting the strange case of this other girl who had disappeared from the suburb. She had just been found in a battered women’s shelter in Springfield, Mass. I asked what had happened to her, and that’s when my aunt really got going.”

The man behind Calvin straightened up. Lynsey realized he was listening to them. _The fuck?_

“What she told me,” Calvin continued, “was that there had been a number of cases like this in our neck of Connecticut, and some more further east. There were men who would come up from the big city, and they would find girls. Most of them were from broken homes, or were poor, or something like that—this girl my aunt talked about was living with her grandparents, and it wasn’t a steady setup.” He took a drink. “They would take them down to NYC, and pimp them. So far, so ordinary, if not good at all. But what my aunt told me was that apparently, a lot of them ended up on Long Island. Near the Hamptons, and these tony resort spots.”

“Did they just drift out there?” Brianna probed. “It might not mean a lot.”

“You’d think, right? But no.” Calvin stretched. “See, even in New York, they always turned up in the strangest parts of town. Near Central Park. On the Upper East Side. By Riverdale in the Bronx. The rich spots. She was pretty sure that there was a child abuse ring of Wall Street bankers and high-society types using and dumping these girls. All of whom, by the way, were white. When I got back here, it kept tickling my brain. My aunt’s a bit of a nut, but it seemed strange. I talked about it with someone at work. A couple months go by, and then something really weird happens.”

The waiter arrived with three heaping plates of barbecue, fish soup and a pickled salad. But even as they dug in, Calvin kept speaking.

“I guess Ron talked about the whole thing with someone he knew in one of the Anaheim hospitals. What happened was that this older fellow, a Haitian guy named Sammy Desjardins, who moved here from the Bronx to be with his daughter’s family, had a panic attack so severe they brought him to the E.R. He had a history of seizures, so not many people paid attention to what he was saying. But when he calmed down, he told a nurse that he wanted to talk to someone about something that had happened in New York, when he was a young man. Said it was weighing on him, and that he wanted to write it down. So they send him to my friend. And he starts talking. A lot.”

Lynsey suddenly realized that the man behind them was still staring at Calvin. _Doesn’t he have food to eat? Or has he never seen an afro before?_

“Sammy saw what happened to those girls.” Calvin gestured for the check. “He was a night janitor at a club where they were taken. He saw some pretty horrifying things, as a matter of fact. So my friend asks if he can refer Sammy to me, and Sammy says yes. I meet him, and I hear these things. And I ask if he would talk to police. He said no. But Sammy’s brother is a journalist in Haiti now, so he said he wanted to speak to a paper. And that, my friends, is where you come in.”

_This is big._ Lynsey realized she had tensed up. “Can we talk to him, then? Is it okay?”

“Yeah, I have his address here.” Calvin slid a card across the table. “I talked to him, and you can text him at that number.” He straightened up; the check had been taken away. “I have to run, but good luck. And, Lynsey?”

She looked up.

“Please go easy on him.” Calvin’s mouth was tight. “He saw some pretty bad things, but he was afraid of going to the NYPD as a person of color in the eighties. Still is. I think his experiences scarred him, and I know he’s remorseful about what happened. Just—just don’t judge him. If you drive Sammy away, you’re toast.”

 


End file.
